1) Congratulations are due to our list members, Mark Lindsay,
who has successfully completed his doctoral studies with distinction
at the University of Western Australia. His thesis was on"Covenanted
Solidarity: The theological bases for Karl Barth's opposition
to Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust"; (another list member,
Professor John Moses, being one of his examiners); and to Rob
Levy, for completing his MA thesis on "Screening the Past:Scholarly
histories and popular memories" for Washington State University.

2a)David Alvarez and Robert A.Graham,SJ. _Nothing Sacred.Nazi
Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945_. London and Portland,Oregon:
Frank Cass Publishers, 1997. Pp 190. Cloth$42.50. ISBN 0-7146-4744-6
Paper ISBN 0-7146-4302-5(This review appeared on H-German on June
5th) Fr.Robert Graham, who sadly died last year, was a notable
journalist and Jesuit, who wrote several books on the history
of the Papacy and the wartime policies of Pope Pius XII. In the
course of these studies, Graham uncovered a large amount of material
relating to the espionage and surveillance efforts by foreign
governments or emissaries directed against the Vatican. With the
assistance of a younger colleague >from California, David Alvarez,his
bulky findings have now been reduced to a compact and readable
183 pages, concentrating on the Nazi attempts to spy on the Vatican
during these turbulent years. The Vatican was, and is, a strictly
hierarchical entity,whose policies are not subject to public scrutiny.
Its diplomacy,similarly, is enveloped in secrecy, a characteristic
which became even more tightly controlled once the European war
broke out in 1939. The result was that all sorts of groundless
rumours, imagined scenarios and even calculated falsehoods were
rife about what the Pope would do or say, purveyed by "informants"
who were only too ready to satisfy the world's curiosity, often
for personal gain. Since this "information" was never
authorized, but equally rarely officially denied, fanciful speculations
abounded, some of which were later repeated in post-war journalistic
books. The Holy See was widely assumed to have considerable spiritual
power which could affect the Catholic citizens of many nations.
Such influence was worth cultivating. For this reason,during the
war, "all of the major belligerents (with the exception of
the Soviet Union) maintained diplomatic missions at the Vatican
to press the righteousness of their cause and to solicit the support
of the Pope and his advisers. At the same time all of the major
belligerents (including the Soviet Union) sought to determine
the sympathies of the papacy, and to uncover and frustrate the
intrigues of their opponents by maintaining intelligence coverage
of the Vatican" (ix). Prominent among these players was Nazi
Germany. Hitler and his associates always had a hostile and suspicious
attitude towards Catholicism. The Papacy, they believed, employed
a world-wide network of clerical agents supplying potentially
dangerous information to Rome. In consequence their deliberate
aim was to curtail and curb such activities, not only by a ruthless
persecution of "political Catholicism" in Germany and
its occupied territories, but also by establishing their own networks
of agents in the Vatican environment itself. A principal locale
was the German Embassy to the Holy See. The Ambassador, Diego
von Bergen, however, was a diplomat of the old school, rightly
sceptical of much of the supposed "insider information"
fed to him by various dubious contacts, and even by some pro-Nazi
clerics. But Bergen was near retirement and no longer enjoyed
much support in Berlin. Much more significant were the intrigues
of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA),
whose pathological hatred of the church made him lose all sense
of logic or proportion. He built a large staff in Munich and Berlin
and in 1941 declared that "our ultimate goal is the extirpation
of all Christianity" (59). In the meanwhile intelligence
operations against such a dangerous foe should be intensified.
The Vatican, as the centre of this anti-Nazi activity, was particularly
suspect. Already in March 1939 an agent had been sent to Rome
to report on the papal election, though his speculations proved
entirely erroneous. This debacle showed that spying on the Holy
See required better staffing, despite strong opposition from the
regular diplomats. The RSHA was successful in penetrating not
only the Nunciatures in Berlin and Slovakia, but also the central
office of the German Catholic bishops. Various agents with contacts
to high ecclesiastics were paid large sums to send in information.
These machinations, on the other side, aroused alarm in the Vatican,
leading to the belief that the Nazis were about to invade Vatican
territory or even kidnap the Pope. In August 1943, this threat
seemed so imminent that sensitive diplomatic documents and the
Pope's personal files were hidden under the marble floors of the
papal palace. Despite the authors' diligent researches, they have
been unable to find any hard evidence that such a plot was instigated,
but the fears were genuine, even if "inspired" by western
agents. The closest the RSHA got to penetrating the Vatican itself
was by bribing some exiles from Georgia with funds to buy a convent
in which they tried to install a secret radio transmitter. But
this failed when the Allies reached Rome first. They did manage
to"turn" a young Soviet agent from Estonia, who did
translations for the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, but
he promptly reverted when the Germans left and was last seen in
a Siberian 'gulag'. The harvest was very meagre. The only real
success came from eavesdropping on the Vatican's signals communications
and deciphering the Vatican's diplomatic codes. Despite being
the first in history to use cryptography, by the 1940s the Vatican's
methods were primitively out of date. Both Germany and Italy had
no difficulty in reading most of the papal traffic, or in tapping
the various nuncios' telephones. In fact, the Vatican officials
knew their systems were insecure, and hence were obliged to be
even more discreet than ever. It was a severe restraint, and probably
the greatest weakness of papal wartime diplomacy. The authors
conclude that the results were mixed. No high-level Nazi agent
was placed in the Papal entourage, and none of the very small
number of individuals in the Vatican responsible for policy decisions
was disloyal. This lack of success was partly due to the duplication
of efforts by rival Nazi agencies, but also to the total misapprehension
of the Vatican's stature in the world,which was nothing like as
powerful (or sinister) as the Nazis imagined. Nazi espionage was
only one of the reasons why the Vatican's influence and prestige
suffered disastrously during the second world war. Essentially
much more significant was the growing gap between its ideals of
peace and justice and the meagre achievements of its diplomacy,
for example in its efforts to mitigate the Holocaust. But the
authors succeed very well in depicting vividly the turgid, claustrophobic
and conspiratorial atmosphere which prevailed during those fateful
years.JSC

2b) _Evangelische Pfarrer: Zur sozialen und politischen Rolle
einer burgerlichen Gruppe in der deutschen Gesellschaft des 18
bis 20 Jahrhunderts_, edited by Luise Schorn-Schutte and Walter
Sparn. (Konfession und Gesellschaft. Beitrage zur Zeitgeschichte,
12) Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1997. ISBN 4-17-014404-9. 217pp_Evangelische
Pfarrer_ is a collection of ten essays edited by an historian,
Luise Schorn-Schutte, and a theologian, Walter Sparn.Like half
of the contributors to their volume, both were born in the 1940s.
Eberhard Winkler and Johannes Wahl are the only two theologians
represented; Reinhart Siegert was trained in Germanistik, and
the others all appear to be historians, Given their professional
profile, it is no wonder that the collection is heavily influenced
by the methodological and thematic approaches to history which
emerged in Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s. Indeed, a quick
survey of the contents reminds us just how productive those years
were in developing new ways to explore the German past.Schorn-Schutte's
piece on "Evangelische Geistlichkeit im Alten Reich und in
der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft im 18 Jahrhundert"
echoes attempts at cross-national comparisons that grew out of
the French Annales school and its interest in the"longue
duree". Wahl's "Lebenslaufe und Geschlechterraume im
Pfarrhaus des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts" builds on alternative
traditions of Alltagsgeschichte. Hartmut Titze's use of quantification,
in "Uberfullung und Mangel im evangelische Pfarramt seit
dem ausgehenden 18 Jahrhundert" is reminiscent of older works
by Konrad Jarausch, who used quantified date to explore issues
of professionalization. Titze's assumption that social structures
underlie cultural and material phenomena brings to mind the structuralism
of Hans Mommsen and others. In his study of the Protestant pastors
in the Vormarz in Kurhessen, Robert von Friedeburg echoes the
so-called Bielefeld school of social history around Hans-Ulrich
Wehler and its efforts to link the social and the political. The
marks of Bielefeld are also evident in Frank-Michael Kuhlemann's
essay on "Die evangelischen Pfarrer und ihre Mentalitat in
Baden 1860-1914" with its sociological concerns, debt to
Max Weber, and incorporation of the Annalistes' attention to"mentalite".
Oliver Janz, in "Kirche,Staat und Burgertum in Preussen",
focuses on another preoccupation of the Bielefelders:the educated
middle class, or "Bildungsburgertum". Questions of change
and continuity, so crucial to reassessments of World Wars Iand
II in earlier works by Fritz Fischer, and at the heart of the
debate over Germany's alleged "Sonderweg", reappear
in productive ways in Kurt Nowak's fascinating "Poliische
Pastoren: Der evangelische Geistliche als Sonderfall des Staatsburgers
(1862-1932)".Of course the past twenty years have also changed
historical methodology, and most of the essays reflect at least
some of these developments. Schorn-Schutte and Wahl pay attention
to women and gender, a part of the population and a category of
analysis noticeably absent from mainstream German scholarship
of the 1970s. Kuhlemann's interest in culture represents another
innovation, evident also in Christoph Klessmann's intriguing"Evangelische
Pfarrer im Sozialismus - soziale Stellung und politische Bedeuting
in der DDR", with its exploration of "milieu".
The one piece by a Germanisten, Siegert's :"Pfarrer und Literatur
im 19 Jahrhundert", might not have been possible without
scholarship on reading and production of books over the past decades,
some of the best of it by the cultural historian Robert Darnton.
So although there are times at which the essays in _Evangelische
Pfarrer_ give one the impression of being in a time warp, in fact
the book in rather subtle ways shows signs of the 1990s as well.As
the book proves, application of older approaches, many of them
drawn from Wehler's "Gesellschaftsgeschichte" - a particularly
German variety of social history - to the study of Protestant
clergy in modern Germany, can be very fruitful. For example, the
emphasis on the political contexts in which pastors existed helps
complicate old cliches about relations between church and state.
Here we see not simply the oft-invoked union of "Thron und
Adler",but a multi-faceted, dynamic, regionally-varied relationship
between pastors - some of whom were liberals, some of whom sought
more independence for their churches - and states that followed
their own agendas. Attention to issues of class reveals complex
connections between the clergy and the bourgeoisie:sometimes they
overlapped to the point of coalescence; sometimes they moved in
opposite directions with regard to prestige and power. In general,
studying the social and material realities of pastors' lives puts
into perspective the changing conditions in which clergy and their
families operated over time. Surprisingly, one of the most interesting
and useful pieces in the book is what might seem at first glance
the driest: Titze's quantitative analysis of the six phases in
the market for Protestant clergy from the end of the eighteenth
century to the present.But there are downsides to the reliance
on methodologies from the1970s as well. For one thing, those by
now somewhat old-fashioned approaches lend an unnecessary provincialism
to much of the book. The essays here, rooted in a German historical
tradition,miss much of the enrichment that drawing on works from
outside might have produced. In vain I searched the footnotes
for reference to the burgeoning English-language literature on
religion in Germany, much of it written by subscribers to this
list: people like David Diephouse, Helmut Smith, and Dagmar Herzog.
Although such works are in many cases directly relevant to the
topics being explored, they might as well not have been written
for all the impact they appear to have had on these scholars.
Not surprisingly,the few exceptions - references to Steven Ozment
and David Sabean or to Robert Ericksen (pp. 37, 48 and 72) - appear
in what are, in my view, some of the livelier essays here: the
contributions by Wahl and Titze.The book's chronological coverage
also reflects both the strengths and the weaknesses of the 1970s
historiography. One of the great contributions of that decade
was its recovery of the Kaiserreich as a period of interest. To
a significant extent that concentration grew out of efforts to
identify the roots of National Socialism, but the works stood
on their own merits. _Evangelische Pfarrer_ partakes in that scholarly
legacy; moreover, it also reflects the significant emphasis these
days on the post-World War II Germanies. Klessmann's contribution
on the German Democratic Republic is an excellent example of how
much can be learned by taking into consideration the most recent
German past. Entirely absent from the volume, however, is any
examination of Protestant pastors in the Nazi era. The editors
decry this gap in their introduction (xxiii),but it sticks out
like the famous blue elephant in the middle of the room which
no one mentions and all the guests politely avoid, but which nevertheless
remains an all-too-embarrassing presence in every conversation.
How can one speak of the development of German Protestant clergy
over time without even addressing the years that constituted the
greatest challenge to these men and their congregations? Given
the many outstanding German scholars working in the area, the
editors could certainly have done more to include some discussion
of the Nazi years.Finally, a sociological approach that lends
itself well to exploring processes like secularization in many
cases also produces bloodless analyses that can become tedious
for readers. The worst culprit in this regard is Friedeburg. I
found myself scouring his essay for signs of human life - anecdotes,
even names - as relief from the impersonal discussion. In contrast,
Eberhard Winkler's piece on"Evangelische Pfarrer und Pfarrerinnen
in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1949-1989)", the least
historically and methodologically informed of all the contributions,
was a refreshing reminder that history can be about people. Perhaps
Winker could be faulted for his anecdotal approach, but I for
one benefitted from his personal, engaged assessment of the challenges
facing the Protestant clergy in West Germany before unification
- and after. It is Winkler too whose concluding question provides
a fitting close to the book: "Wie werden Menschen dazu bewegt,
ihre geistigen und materiellen Gaben gemass (1 Peter: 4:10) als
gute Haushalter der vielfaltigen Gnade Gottes in den Dienst zu
stellen?" (p. 211) The reference to the New Testament and
the content of 1 Peter 4:10 itself "As every man has received
the gift, even so minister the same to one another, as good stewards
of the manifold grace of God".remind us that, after all,
a discussion of pastors is still a conversation about religion.By
invoking scripture, Winkler highlights what is perhaps the most
serious weakness of a purely social-historical approach to the
study of Protestant pastors: that is, the way it excludes precisely
the most absorbing and even urgent questions about religion. Economics,social
class, relations with state authorities, education,professionalization,
and religious institutions are only part of the story. What about
belief, ritual, tradition, community, faith and spirituality?
To address these components of the history of Christianity in
Germany, one needs tools that allow access to the irrational,
the emotional, and even the physical - tools that are more likely
to come >from anthropology, cultural history and gender studies
than from sociology and social history._Evangelische Pfarrer_
would have benefited from more careful editing. Some problems
with breaks in words produced many cases of inappropriate hyphenation
in the middle of lines. In addition to being distracting, non-words
like "kon-ne", "Bekennt-nisse" and"ba-dischen"
(pp 89,93 and 121) create a postmodern or even Heideggerian effect
that stands at odds with the book's content. There is no index,
and Janz's essay is severely under-footnoted.Such quibbles aside,
Schorn-Schutte and Sparn have put together a collection that will
be useful to everyone concerned with Protestant clergy in the
Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, or the post-World War II Germanies.Doris
Bergen, University of Notre Dame(with apologies for the unavoidable
omission of umlauts)

3) Journal Article: Ronald Webster, German "non-aryan"
clergymen and the anguish of exile after 1933. in Journal of Religious
History, (Sydney,Australia), Vol 22, no 1, Feb. 1998, pp 83-103.This
article, based on oral and archival sources, comments on the lives
in exile of a group of "non-aryan" pastors forced to
flee to the U.K., Canada and USA to escape Nazi anti-Jewish persecution.
It pays homage to the work of those who assisted the refugees,
and explores the ways these testimonies open new ground for the
the ongoing dialogue between Judaism and Christianity.

4) Whitsun in the South Tyrol. The village of Klobenstein sits
halfway up the mountainside, high above the gorge of the River
Etsch which hurtles down >from the Brenner Pass, past Bozen,
Trent and Verona to the Italian plains.Nestled amongst surrounding
meadows, in its midst is the village church - hardly larger than
a chapel - where my wife and I went to celebrate the Coming of
the Holy Spirit on Whitsunday.Like most of these ancient churches,
it must have been a simple Gothic structure, but was later rebuilt
during the baroque period,and now is surmounted by a onion-shaped
steeple, whence two discordant bells unharmoniously summoned us
to the Mass.Inside the apse was decorated with three large pictures
under classical porticos, and the altar was moved forward, so
that there wasn't enough room for all the parishioners, especially
on a major Festival like Pentecost. Many of them were obliged
to stand throughout in the aisle, the narthex or even outside
the west door.Luckily the sermon was short and simple, while in
the gallery a wind and brass ensemble accompanied the Introit,
Gloria and Creed with a tuneful folkloric setting. A lady parishioner
read the Prayers of the People, invoking God's aid for the tense
political situation in Indonesia, which sounded very far from
this peaceful Alpine village.We sang a hymn, which, since there
were no hymn books, must have been well known to the villagers.
But I did notice the young priest glowering at the congregation
for not singing more enthusiastically. Afterwards everyone spilled
out to the nearby coffee shop and Gasthaus to enjoy the bright
sunlight.We walked back through the copses and fields, glowingly
bursting with yellow buttercups, king cups, campion and blue violets.
We crossed over the picturesque little tram line which loops and
turns through the meadows. Every hour a tiny South Tyrolean "sky-train"trundles
slowly between the farms and hamlets, as it has done ever since
it was built in 1907.At the other end of the line is the settlement
of Mary Ascension,where the wealthy merchants of Bozen have for
centuries built their summer homes to escape >from the heat
below. The only sounds were the calling of the cuckoos and the
clanging of cow-bells. It was an idyllic rustic paradise.But it
was not always so. Whenever the Etsch gorge was blocked by rock
slides, floods or high waters, the only route open from north
of the Alps necessitated ascending the hillsides to Klobenstein
and then zig-zagging down the steep descent to Bozen far below.
From Roman times onwards, thousands of merchants, soldiers, pilgrims
and caravans trod the same paths we took on our way to church.Plundering
armies invaded from north and south, looting the peasants' cattle,
and forcing them higher up into the mountains.Even in modern times,
political turmoil has engulfed the area. Originally the South
Tyrol was part of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. But in 1919 it
was awarded to Italy, in flagrant contradiction to President Wilson's
principle of self-determination.Under Mussolini, a vicious policy
of "italianization" was launched -democratic rights
were expunged, the German-speaking school system abolished, and
place names forcibly changed. In 1939 Hitler and Mussolini signed
a notorious agreement, giving the South Tyrolese the option, either
of moving back to the German Reich to be rewarded with new lands
conquered by the Nazi armies,or of compulsorily becoming Italian
citizens, and even, it was said,of being evicted to Sicily if
they disobeyed. This choice split the community apart, and the
wounds still show. With Mussolini's overthrow in 1943, the South
Tyrol was seized by the Nazis, and hopes for a German future arose
again, only to be dashed as the American and British armies "liberated"
the territory in 1945. Demonstrations and sporadic violence against
Italy's rule continued until finally, some thirty years ago, the
Italian government recognised the virtue of multiculturalism and
restored most the German-speaking rights.The casualties in this
long drawn-out struggle were high. On our way back to the hotel,
we passed a memorial chapel dedicated to a young priest, Fr Peter
Nuss Mayer, executed by the Nazis for refusing to take an oath
of allegiance to the SS in 1945. Only a third of those who "opted"
to go to Germany returned to their homes after the war. Despite
the lushness of the meadows, economic realities make for difficult
survival on these mountain slopes. Only embedded tradition and
loyalty keeps this German-speaking minority attached to their
homesteads.Across the valley looms the massive cliff face of the
Schlern, rising a thousand feet precipitously from the valley
floor. In the summer evenings, when the sun's angle is right,
the whole rock face turns a brilliant crimson - much to the delight
of the tourists dining on the hotel terraces. Then the light fades,
darkness falls, a night-bird calls,and the whole valley is silent,
wrapped in the peace and grace of God. JSC